I don't know how many times someone or other here has said something like "floods don't make strata," and I've mostly objected to the idea that the worldwide Flood would be like any local flood, but it turns out that local floods DO make strata. This information is given in the film I posted in Message 1140 but since many of you may not have watched it, here's some information about the Bijou Creek flood I tracked down:
A study was made to determine the character of deposits of a major flood along Bijou Creek, Colorado. These deposits consist of sand that was laid down in mid-June, 1965 during rapid movement of the upper flow regime. They are composed largely of horizontal or nearly horizontal layers that cover the channel and extend outward beyond the banks on each side of the stream commonly for distances of one-quarter to one-half mile or more. Typical thickness of these deposits ranges from two to three feet, but a maximum of 12 feet was measured at one place on West Bijou Creek.
Estimates indicate that horizontal strata constitute 90 to 95 percent of all deposits. The second most common structure of the flood plains is a tabular planar type of crossbedding formed of foresets developed mostly along outer margins of depositional sheets. Apparently such structures formed where water that had lost some of its force deposited sand along a sloping sediment front. Other locally developed structures include climbing ripple laminae and convolute bedding, which formed during waning stages of deposition and which apparently are characteristic of relatively sheltered areas away from the path of the main flood.
The dominant grade size represented by sand of the Bijou Creek flood deposits, based on mechanical analyses of 137 samples from the four localities studied, is medium grained (0.5-0.25 mm); 51 samples were in this class; 37 were dominantly fine grained; and 36 dominantly coarse grained. The very large objects, such as beams and concrete slabs from bridges, that were deposited during the storm indicate a velocity of water well above that necessary to carry fine to coarse sand; grain size in the deposits probably was determined by the size of sand particles available in the source area a few miles to the south. Sorting was fair in most of the 137 samples; it was good in only seven and poor in ten.
Data on the structure, texture, and shape of the sand bodies deposited by floods of major proportions should be useful in interpreting ancient deposits formed in a comparable environment. Also, they should help in relating the types of structures in a recognizable flood deposit to the specific stage of flood deposition, or stream regime, and in distinguishing the deposits of a river channel from those of adjacent flood plains.
Here's that film again for pictures of the strata starting about 1:04 on the counter.
(Just as a reminder, this is the film that proves all Steno's principles are wrong, confirms Walther's Law and shows that the fossil order is wrong, that younger fossils may be deposited beneath older ones. It shows flume experiments in which sediments deposit simultaneously both vertically and laterally in a current.)
I think it was just that the strata above the Grand Canyon were directly in line with the Kaibab Uplift while those to the north were only exposed to the tilting of the whole area.
Personally, I believe that the Colorado Plateau was uplifted first, sometime after the Cretaceous. It was planed off until all that was left was the ancestral Colorado River which removed much of the Grand Staircase rocks over 30 million years or so. Later, the the Kaibab Uplift started, changing the course of the river to the northwest until stream capture returned it to a SW flowing stream once again.
That way we explain the entrenched meanders and the interruption of sedimentation in the Colorado River delta, and then the second phase of canyon building in the GC with the Kaibab uplift. In my opinion this explains the previous confusion as to the age of the Grand Canyon. There were two phases.
Well, I've been wrong before but it makes some sense.
I don't know how many times someone or other here has said something like "floods don't make strata," and I've mostly objected to the idea that the worldwide Flood would be like any local flood, but it turns out that local floods DO make strata. This information is given in the film I posted in Message 1140 but since many of you may not have watched it, here's the information about it I tracked down:
So, where are the limestones?
And do you realize that these deposits are confined to 1 mile wide deposits?
According to your definition, these are not strata.
Re: Flume experiments pretty much abolish the current thinking about strata
Faith writes:
So, experiments which you can see for yourself in this film abolish Steno except for the one condition of deposition in still water, abolish the millions of years claimed for deposition of the geological column, and abolish the fossil order. YET WHO TALKS ABOUT THIS?
It's bad enough that we're discussing geology in the Biological Evolution forum. If you really want to discuss Bertault it would be better to propose a new thread over at Proposed New Topics.
Re: Flume experiments pretty much abolish the current thinking about strata
Look at the parts of the video I mentioned in Message 1140, the experiments speak for themselves, I don't need to know anything else about Berthault.
Look, I never have the intention of starting these long off-topic discussions, I merely post an objection to something in the thread and off we go with me usually trying and failing to get off the runaway train. Since I don't start out with any interest in such a lengthy discussion, which usually proves intensely frustrating and boring for me, you or someone else should propose a separate thread. I don't want to do it because that would mean committing myself to this annoying exoerience I want to end.
So far I don't even know if geologists have done any calculations about the rates of erosion of the Monument Valley buttes or the walls of the Grand Canyon.
Slope retreat in the Grand Canyon (the rate of erosion of the canyon walls) is 1.6 feet per thousand years. If the Grand Canyon is seventeen million years old then the total amount of slope retreat for both canyon walls is about 10 miles, which also happens to be the average width of the canyon.
If you prefer some other age for the Grand Canyon just do the math. For example, if the Grand Canyon is 4500 years old that would be 14.4 feet of total slope retreat. The river averages about 300 feet wide in the canyon, so the Grand Canyon should be about 314.4 feet wide. Also, the rapid erosion of the canyon sides during the flood would have left them vertical instead of sloping. Since none of this matches reality, the Grand Canyon cannot be 4500 years old.
So at that rate for 17 million years, by now there should be a dead space of 10 miles (average) the whole length of the canyon where all the walls had eroded flat, been reduced to dust and rubble as it were. Why don't we see that?
If you prefer some other age for the Grand Canyon just do the math. For example, if the Grand Canyon is 4500 years old that would be 14.4 feet of total slope retreat. The river averages about 300 feet wide in the canyon, so the Grand Canyon should be about 314.4 feet wide. Also, the rapid erosion of the canyon sides during the flood would have left them vertical instead of sloping. Since none of this matches reality, the Grand Canyon cannot be 4500 years old.
Ah, but IIRC, the GC sediments were soft when they started to erode. Consequently the wall should be laid back many times that distance. Of course they wouldn't be as steep as we see them ...
I get about 7.5 feet in 4500 years, OK doubled makes your 14.4 feet.
The river averages about 300 feet wide in the canyon, so the Grand Canyon should be about 314.4 feet wide.
Sounds like it's about exactly what it should be then for an age of 4500 years, but that would depend on how wide the canyon was when the river began. Of course I believe the receding Flood waters cut the canyon to a great width and that the river is just what is left of that massive flow, and that most of the erosion since the river shrank is from weathering..
As for vertical sides wouldn't that depend on the amount and force of the receding FLood? Don't the walls of the meanders slope back? In any case all the canyon walls would have sloped back from erosion in 4500 years I would assume.
Slope retreat in the Grand Canyon (the rate of erosion of the canyon walls) is 1.6 feet per thousand years. If the Grand Canyon is seventeen million years old then the total amount of slope retreat for both canyon walls is about 10 miles, which also happens to be the average width of the canyon.
There is no info presented about how this slope retreat rate is calculated.
Anyway, you are presenting the equation: 10 miles = 1.6 ft/Kyears x 17 Myears
I suspect the calculated method was something along the lines of: 1.6 ft/Kyears = 10 miles / 17 Myears
So at that rate for 17 million years, by now there should be a dead space of 10 miles (average) the whole length of the canyon where all the walls had eroded flat, been reduced to dust and rubble as it were. Why don't we see that?
What do you mean by "eroded flat"?
I recall you have peculiar difficulties in knowing what is and isn't flat.
Tanypteryx hasn't replied to this yet, so I'll give it a try.
Faith writes:
Yes I know all that and took it into account in the last post.
You didn't quote anything from Tanypteryx, but I think you're saying that you know that the date of formation of a sedimentary layer that becomes deeply buried beneath more sedimentary layers and then lithified is much, much older than the date of eventual exposure to the elements and the beginning of erosion of that layer. That is, what are now the hoodoos lay buried deeply beneath overlying strata for millions and millions of years before uplift transformed the region into one of net erosion, exposed the layer of rock where the hoodoos now are, and uneven erosion and caps of harder rock and probably elements of serendipity created the spires of rock we call hoodoos today.
It's still supposedly five million years since the Grand Canyon was cut (although in reality it was cut after all the strata were laid down which would make it more recent than that since we have Holocene deposits).
Since you mention an age of five million years for the Grand Canyon, this is the time to mention something I've been holding back that affects the width of the Grand Canyon. As you hopefully know by now, the Colorado river was never as wide as the canyon in most places. The average width of the canyon is about 10 miles, but it is 18 miles at its widest point and only 1800 feet at its narrowest (Marble Canyon, which marks the beginning of the Grand Canyon). The width of the canyon is caused by slope retreat, which began once the river began to incise into the landscape. What caused the variable width of the canyon, and why isn't it approximately the same width throughout its length?
First lets use the figure for the rate of slope retreat to calculate what should be the width of the Grand Canyon if it is five millions years old, as opposed to the seventeen million years I used earlier. 1.6 feet per thousand years for five million years is 1.5 miles, and with two slopes (north and south) that yields 3 miles. How could the Grand Canyon's average width of 10 miles so greatly exceed the width of 3 miles calculated by the rate of slope retreat?
There are a couple avenues that could be explored. One is that the rate of slope retreat has been underestimated and is much larger, something in the neighborhood 5 feet per thousand years. That's not impossible, but I think the 1.6 value was carefully calculated, and given what we see at the wider parts of the Grand Canyon I don't think that's the answer. The answer lies in images like this:
Central in this image is the island of rock. How did it get there? Well, at one time the Colorado river flowed around this island of rock, which was then a true island and much wider than it is now. Where it flowed around the island the Colorado became two rivers with four riverbanks instead of just two. As the Kaibab Uplift continued the two rivers cut down through the rising landscape just as did the rest of the Colorado. The rate of slope retreat doubled, from 3.2 feet per thousand years (3.2 = 1.6 * 2 slopes) to 6.4 feet per thousand years (6.4 = 1.6 * 4 slopes). So in five million years the width of this section of the Grand Canyon should be 6 miles.
Of course it isn't 6 miles. The section of the Grand Canyon shown in the image appears to be one of those very wide portions of the Grand Canyon that is closer to 18 miles wide. How did 6 miles become 18 miles?
The answer is that the Colorado wasn't just divided by one island. It was divided by multiple islands in a situation something like this:
Each division of the river created two additional slopes, multiplying the rate at which the canyon could expand by incision into the landscape and erosion away of the additional slopes.
But on those five million years which would have to be the same timing for the hoodoos as I just explained...
Most of the sedimentary rock in the walls of the Grand Canyon is much harder than the hoodoos and erodes much more slowly. The erosion rate of the hoodoos is 20-40 feet per thousand years, while the erosion rate for the walls of the Grand Canyon is about 1.6 feet per thousand years. So the Grand Canyon is eroding at less than 10% of the rate of the hoodoos. More importantly, the hoodoos are narrow spires. A hoodoo that is ten feet thick will disappear in a few hundred years (while more hoodoos will erode into appearance in the nearby landscape).
...the erosion rates would still demolish the formation before now.
The Grand Canyon has hundreds of miles of landscape for the canyon walls to retreat into. If nothing else changes (i.e., if the Colorado continues to flow and the continent doesn't change) the canyon will survive for hundreds of millions of years, merely growing ever wider as the slopes continue their retreat.
quote:
Since you mention an age of five million years for the Grand Canyon, this is the time to mention something I've been holding back that affects the width of the Grand Canyon. As you hopefully know by now, the Colorado river was never as wide as the canyon in most places. The average width of the canyon is about 10 miles, but it is 18 miles at its widest point and only 1800 feet at its narrowest (Marble Canyon, which marks the beginning of the Grand Canyon). The width of the canyon is caused by slope retreat, which began once the river began to incise into the landscape. What caused the variable width of the canyon, and why isn't it approximately the same width throughout its length?
Of course Faith is aware of it. She used it to argue that the Colorado river could not have cut the Grand Canyon. The contradiction between arguing that the Grand Canyon is both too wide and too narrow amused me.
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